18 Attachment(s)
TR -- Mueller Reverse Loop
Four of use rode mueller last night. Fighting the traffic to get there and then seeing a line of cars at the bottom. Well that made me remember why I don't ride it much. I could have been up any of the SL canyons in less time. Anyway, we decided to try the reverse loop. I had heard it talked up several times. In the past I would go to elephant rock and turn around and bomb down. What I had heard was that the section from the flat on top to the rock had the best down hill. :eek7: Which was hard to believe because from the rock down is pretty sweet.
Doing the reverse loop is 13.5 miles and with more climbing. We rode from the trail head to this other trail head. Which is just up canyon creek road. Getting to it on pavement was not bad, except for the steep climb up canyon creek on hot black pavement. Next time we will drive and park at the top of canyon creek with another vehicle. You could eliminate 3 miles of pavement this way. When you exit the pavement you go on a dirt road for a while ending up on a single track. This backside climb is beautiful. However it is 4 miles of an uphill climb. It has some switchbacks and stuff through the trees. A real good workout! I really like most of it, except for some of the loose rocky sections. It takes more energy out of you.
Well to make a long story short. We had a guy in the group that was struggling for LIFE. He hadn't been for a month and we were waiting for sometime at the flat on top. It was 8:45pm and the darkness was closing in. We decided to send one guy back down that side to get him and the other two of us would go out mueller. We only had abut 30 minutes of light and 45 to complete darkness. Fourtycal and I bombed and hoped for the best. We had some decent light until we got to the rock. I must say this section of downhill is awesome and worth the praise. It just adds to what you are going to get past the rock. I would highly recommend the reverse loop for this reason. :nod:
After it got really dark we just kept the tire towards the middle of the trail and hoped for the best. REALLY dark in places as you can imagine. We made it to the trucks right at complete darkness. Fourtycal drove to the top of canyon creek to wait for the other two. What a ride!!! I took some pictures.....mainly of the area before the flat. (Still light) I would do this loop over the standard (out and back) on busy day. Which is everyday at mueller. We only saw a 4 others bikers on the trail. On the mueller side it would have been gridlock. This could be the biggest advantage to the reverse loop.
Trail info
